A couple of weeks ago I went to the Washington Writers Conference. Usually I’m excited about the panels and workshops, etc., but the purpose of this visit was strictly business—meeting agents. By signing up for the conference you got 5 minutes to pitch 4 agents of your choosing. It was a solid selection. I decided to only meet with people I hadn’t already sent queries to.

The pitches

The conference came after my last post, in which I wrote that the idea of networking for this book was an annoying concept. Given that that’s how I was feeling at the time, I didn’t go to the cocktail party in Bethesda the Friday before the conference to mingle with agents and publishers—including a few I pitched. I should have gone, but I didn’t.

Saturday, I attended a few panels, during which the pitch sessions were scheduled. Two of the agents I sat with made me feel stupid for even being there (was it me, or was it the fact that they had been sitting in a 90 degree room all day?) One asked me for 75 pages (yes!) and the last asked me if my book was “like a Nicholas Sparks novel but with black characters.”

Blink.

If you follow this blog, then you have an idea of how my face reacted, outside of my control, to that question. I recovered though, and she asked for three chapters.

Nevertheless, I was feeling a little deflated at the end, like I hadn’t really made the most of the day. But then this guy who works at a tiny publisher approached me. I think his company has an interest in minority authors. Anyway, he said they do everything traditional publishers do- edit, market, etc. and you don’t need an agent to pitch them.

I did some investigating, and I learned that there are other ways to getting published besides querying millions of agents and then hoping to find a publisher. Apparently there is a whole army of tiny presses like his (e.g., university presses) that target niche audiences that you can pitch without an agent. Once I look into it further, I will probably blog about it in greater depth. For now, I’ll just let you know that I sent him my full manuscript.

The conference: a reminder that I’m a black woman

This is the first writing conference I attended that wasn’t 90% women. I hadn’t really thought about that when I signed up, but the differences were apparent immediately.

While most of the agents were women, all of the panelists on the publisher panel were men. The keynote speaker was a sportswriter for a major newspaper who mentioned at least dozen of writers and athletes who influenced him—all of them were men.  Meanwhile, the lady sitting next to me was there to pitch a biography about a woman and trees. One of the few male agents expressed some interest and she was surprised that a man was interested in that topic.  His response was “my sister is a women’s studies professor” (or something along those lines).

What I learned from that story is that if a man doesn’t have a sister who is a women’s studies professor, he won’t read a biography about a woman. For real though- is that what the agent was saying?

One of the panels was about gender and biography, which I enjoyed. The panelists included famous unauthorized biographer Kitty Kelley and James McGrath Morris– a white man who just published a biography about a black, female civil rights reporter named Edith L. Payne.

I really respected James’ comments about his position being a white man writing about Edith.  He seemed like he got a lot of what I talk about on this blog.  He mentioned that during his time in the industry he observed that when black women write about black women, for example, they are generally perceived as more biased or sympathetic to the subject (he used a different word—I wish I could remember—but that was jist).  Juxtapose those comments with Kitty Kelley’s discussion of her experience writing about Frank Sinatra, for which she got a lot of backlash. (Sinatra even tried to sue her before she had written a word! Thankfully that’s illegal.) She said that because Sinatra is perceived as the pinnacle of manliness, it was in fact men who had trouble writing about him objectively. They had too much reverence for him, while she could write about him (and his flaws) more honestly.

So basically, everyone’s biased. That actually is what I think—there’s always going to be some subjectivity. But what this panel demonstrated was that, while the idea that black women can’t write about other black women objectively is the majority view, Kitty’s perspective that white men can’t write about a white man objectively is the minority view. In other words, when white men write a biography that is the standard/baseline. When anyone else writes, however, they inevitably insert their biased female/minority perspectives into the page…right?

To be fair, I’ll leave you with this…

To wrap up this post about networking and gender/race issues in the publishing industry, I leave with this: at the conference I ran into numerous friends that I met in classes I took at the Writer’s Center (where this journey all began).  One, a white woman, told me she had pitched her story (elsewhere, not at this conference) to a black agent who she really connected with. She could tell the agent was interested in her work, but she couldn’t represent her- because she only represents black authors.

I think that’s a bad business move for the agent (and not just because I believe in my friend). I understand the thinking- it is historically more difficult for minority authors to find representation. Still, it’s never a good idea to turn down a good opportunity. If this agent believed in my friend’s book, she should have pursued it. Not only is that her job, but if the book became successful, then she would have more leverage when representing her other, mostly African American, clients. That’s my view, but I can see others disagreeing. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Tis all.  Have a great weekend!